DARK AGES AMERICA

This is the Blog for MORRIS BERMAN, the author of "Dark Ages America". It includes current publications and random thoughts about U.S. Foreign Policy, including letters and reactions to publications from others.
A cultural historian and social critic, MORRIS BERMAN is the author of "Wandering God" and "The Twilight of American Culture". Since 2003 he has been a visiting professor in sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
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February 21, 2010

When Decline Is Staring You Right in the Face

Dear Friends,

Sometimes the ongoing collapse of the US is so obvious, you almost have to laugh. The very newspaper that (4 years ago) dismissed my analysis of the end-of-empire as a "tirade" is now substantiating the analysis. The stories on the front page of today's NY Times (Feb. 21), when taken together, form an interesting picture. One article says that millions are unemployed, and that they can forget about finding work for years to come. (The official figure is 10%, but these figures are always doctored, because typically the US Labor Dept. doesn't put folks whose unemployment compensation ran out back on the unemployment rolls. Actual figure is 1 in 5, or about 20%.) The middle class lost its retirement savings and is now lining up at soup kitchens. However, you'll be glad to hear, the stock market is making a modest recovery.

Then there's an article on how the Afghan Army isn't doing squat, and how the US armed forces are actually the ones waging the (oh-so-necessary-to-our-freedom) war over there. Yes, we really need to send 30,000 more troops into that black hole, without a doubt.

Problems with a deadlocked, do-nothing legislature? How's this for a muscular solution: Evan Bayh, who is leaving the Senate in disgust, thinks that a monthly bipartisan Senate luncheon might create a warm, fuzzy feeling among the bitter ideologues and get things rolling once more. Why he hasn't also come up with a plan to reverse the earth's gravitational field is not quite clear.

And as a lovely ps, an article about Amy Bishop, the biology prof. at the U of Alabama who recently (Feb. 12) responded to not getting tenure by gunning down six of her colleagues, killing three. I can't help wondering if she had been on a steady diet of best-selling management books, such as Winning Through Intimidation and The Brand Called You.America, America!

About Me

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, the Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992, and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (from the Media Ecology Association) in 2013. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–-The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and during 2008-9 was a Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City.